Part 3
Swich was the litle innocentes intent, Hirself unspotted from the world to kepe, Al hidden in hir fadirs hous she went. Whether in waking or in purë sleep She builded hir a closë cellë deep-- Where Lordë Cristë colde walk with hir, And hold alway His sweetë convers there.
So ful she was of gentil charity, She diddë tend upon the sick ech day; To beggars in their grete necessity She gave hir cloke and petticoat away; To no poor wightë did she sayë nay-- And when reprovéd merrily she spoke, “God loveth Charity more than my cloke.”
An oldë widow lay al striken sore With leprosé, that dreed and foul disease; And to hir (filléd to the hertë core With love of God) that she schuld bring hir ease Did Catharine come, nor did hit hir displese That she schuld wash the woundës tenderly, And bind hem up for Goddës charity.
And though the pacient waxéd querulous, The blessid seintë wearied neer a whit, For hir upbrading tong so slanderous, Nor even when upon hir handës lit The leprosé corrupt and foul--for hit Is nothing to the shamë Goddë bore When nailes and speares His smoothë flesch y-tore.
But now behold a woundrous miracle! For al that Seintë Catharine colde do, Hir pacient died and was y-carried wel Unto hir gravë by stout men and true. When they upon hir corse the cloddës threw, Then new as eny childës gan to shine The shrivvelled handes of holy Catharine!
There livéd there a youth clept Nicholas, Who made in that citee seditioun, Causing a gretë riot in that place, So that the magistratës of the toun Hent him and cast him in a strong prisoun; And thilkë wightë they anon did try, And for his sin condemnéd him to die.
And Catharine y-waxéd piteous To see him brought unto this sorry case, And went to him unto the prisoun hous To move his soul to Jhesu Cristës grace. So yong he was and fresh and faire of face, Hir hertë movéd was as to a son, And he by hir sweet, gracious wordes was won.
That for his deth he made a good accord, And was y-shriven wel of his assoyl, And with a humble soul received our Lord From the prestes hands. His hertë that did boil But little whyles ago--was freed from toil, And fixéd on our Lordës precious blood, Which for our sak He spilléd on the rood.
And when he came to executioun, No feer had he nor eny bitter care, But walked among the guardës thurgh the toun In joy so hye as if he trod on air. Seint Catharine she was y-waiting there To cheer his soul against the dreedful end, When unto God his soul at last most wend.
And there thilke holy virgin welcomed him; “Come, Nicholas,” she said, “my sonnë deere. The boul of glorious life is at the brim-- Come, Nicholas--your nuptials are neer; The bridegroom calleth, be you of good cheer.” And whyl they madë redy, on hir brest She kept the hed of Nicholas at rest.
And when that al in ordre had been set, She stretchéd out his nekkë tenderly, “This day your soulës bridegroom shal be met. Hark! how He calleth, sweet and winsomely.” And Nicholas spak to hir ful of glee-- “Jhesu” and “Catharine” the wordes he seid; Then fel the ax and severed off his hed.
And even as his bloody hed did fall, She caught hit in her lap and handës faire, Nor reckéd that the blood was over al Hir robës, but she kissed hit sitting there, And smoothéd doun the rough and ragged hair. God wot that gretë peace was in hir herte That Nicholas in hevin had found his part.
O holy Catharine, pray for us then, Be to our soules a modir and a frend; We are poor wandering and sinful men, And al unstable through the world we wend. Pray for us, Catharine, unto the end, That filléd with thy gretë charity In Goddës love we schuldë live and die.
IN MEMORIAM F. H. M.
KILLED IN ACTION, APRIL 9TH, 1917
Though now we see, as through the battle smoke, The image of your young uplifted face Surprised by death, and broken as it broke The hearts of those who loved your eager grace, Your noble air and magnanimity-- A summer perfect in its flowers and leaves, Brave promises of fruitfulness to be, Which now no hand may bind in goodly sheaves-- No hand but God’s.... Yet your remembered ways, Your eyes alight with gentleness and mirth, The lovely honour of your shortened days, A new grave gladness on the furrowed earth Shall sow for us, a new pride wide and deep-- And we shall see the corn--and reap, and reap.
TO THE IRISH DEAD
You who have died as royally as kings, Have seen with eyes ablaze with beauty, eyes Nor gold nor ease nor comfort could make wise, The glory of imperishable things.
Despite your shame and loneliness and loss-- Your broken hopes, the hopes that shall not cease, Endure in dreams as terrible as peace; Your naked folly nailed upon the cross
Has given us more than bread unto our dearth And more than water to our aching drouth; Though death has been as wormwood in your mouth Your blood shall fructify the barren earth.
_August 11th, 1917._
JOHN REDMOND
Shall it be told in tragic song and story Of two who went embittered all their days, Two lovely Queens divided in their ways Until their hearts grew hard, their tresses hoary? Or shall the flying wings of oratory Of him who bore a great hope on his face Bring from the grave reunion to the grace That men call Ireland and to England’s glory?
Courageous soul, not yet the work is ended: The perfect pact you never lived to see, The peace between the warring sisters mended Must of your patient labours come to be, When in a noise of trumpets loud and splendid The Gael hears blown the name of liberty.
_March 8th, 1918._
BEAUTY
I
(_RELATIVE_)
How many are the forms that beauty shows; To what dim shrines of sweet, forgotten art She calls; on what wide seas her strong wind blows The proud and perilous passion of the heart!
How many are the forms of her decay; The blood that stains the dying of the sun, The love and loveliness that pass away Like roses’ petals scattered one by one.
But there shall issue through the ivory gate, Amid a mist of dreams, one dream-come-true, Beauty immortal, mighty of estate, The beauty that a poet loved in you; The goodness God has set as aureole Upon the naked meekness of your soul.
_July 22nd, 1917._
BEAUTY
II
(_ABSOLUTE_)
Who shall take Beauty in her citadel? Her gates will splinter not to battering days; Her slender spires can bear the onslaught well. Shall any track her through her secret ways To snare the pinions of the golden bird? A feather falling through the jewelled air, Only the echo of a lovely word-- Nowhere her being is, and everywhere.
But one may come at last through many woes And pain and hunger to his resting place, The watered garden of the Mystic Rose, The contemplation of the Bruisèd Face-- The quest of all his wild, adventurous pride; And, seeing Beauty, shall be satisfied.
_July 29th, 1917._
FAITH’S DIFFICULTY
Not these appal The soul tip-toeing to belief: The ribald call, The last black anguish of the thief;
The fellowship Of publican and Pharisee, The harlot’s lip Passionate with humility;
Or the feet kissed By her who was the Magdalen-- The sensualist Is one among a world of men!
Oh, I can look Upon another’s drama; read As in a book Things unrelated to my need;
Give faith’s assent To that abysmal love outpoured-- But why was rent Thy seamless coat for _me_, dear Lord?
Why didst Thou bow Thy bleeding brows for _my_ heart’s good? How shall I now Reach to the mystic hardihood
Where I can take For personal treasure all Thy loss, When for my sake, My sake, Thou didst endure the cross?
For my soul’s worth Was “It is finished!” loudly cried? For me the birth, The sorrows of the Crucified?
_February 16th, 1918._
CHRISTMAS ON CRUSADE
Here shall we bivouac beneath the stars; Gather the remnant of our chivalry About the crackling fires, and nurse our scars, And speak no more as fools must, bitterly.
The roads familiar to His feet we trod; We saw the lonely hills whereon He wept, Prayed, agonised--dear God of very God!-- And watched the whole world while the whole world slept.
We speak no more in anger; Christian men Our armies rolled upon you, wave and wave: But crooked words and swords, O Saracen, Can only hold what they have given--a grave!
We know Him, know that gibbet whence was torn The pardon that a felon spoke on sin: There is more life in His dead crown of thorn Than in your sweeping horsemen, Saladin!
We speak no more in anger, we will ride Homeless to our own homes. His bruised head Had never resting place. Each Christmas-tide Blossoms the thorn and we are comforted.
Yea, of the sacred cradle of our creed We are despoiled; the kindly tavern door Is shut against us in our utmost need-- We know the awful patience of the poor.
We speak no more in anger, for we share His homelessness. We will forget your scorn. The bells are ringing in the Christmas air; God homeless in our homeless homes is born.
THE ASCETIC
A wild wind blows from out the angry sky And all the clouds are tossed like thistle-down Above the groaning branches of the trees; For on this steel-cold night the earth is stirred To shake away its rottenness; the leaves Are shed like secret unremembered sins In the great scourge of the great love of God....
Ere I was learned in the ways of love I looked for it in green and pleasant lands, In apple orchards and the poppy fields, And peered among the silences of woods, And meditated the shy notes of birds But found it not.
Oh, many a goodly joy Of grace and gentle beauty came to me On many a clear and cleansing night of stars. But when I sat among my happy friends (Singing their songs and drinking of their ale, Warming my limbs before their kindly hearth) My loneliness would seize me like a pain, A hunger strong and alien as death.
No comfort stays with such a man as I, No resting place amid the dew and dusk, Whose head is filled with perilous enterprise The endless quest of my wild fruitless love.
But these can tell how they have heard His voice, Have seen His face in pure untroubled sleep, Or when the twilight gathered on the hills Or when the moon shone out beyond the sea!
Have _I_ not seen them? Yet I pilgrimage In desolation seeking after peace, Learning how hard a thing it is to love. There is a love that men find easily, Familiar as the latch upon the door, Dear as the curling smoke above the thatch-- But I have loved unto the uttermost And know love in the desperate abyss, In dereliction and in blasphemy! And fly from God to find him, fill my eyes With road-dust and with tears and starry hopes, Ere I may search out Love unsearchable, Eternal Truth and Goodness infinite, And the ineffable Beauty that is God.
Empty of scorn and ceasing not to praise The meanest stick and stone upon the earth, I strive unto the stark Reality, The Absolute grasped roundly in my hands. Bitter and pitiless it is to love, To feel the darkness gather round the soul, Love’s abnegation for the sake of love, To see my Templed symbols’ slow decay Become of every ravenous weed the food, Where bats beat hideous wings about the arch And ruined roof, where ghosts of tragic kings And sleek ecclesiastics come and go Upon the shattered pavements of my creed.
Yet Mercy at the last shall lead me in, The Bride immaculate and mystical Tenderly guide my wayward feet to peace, And show me love the likeness of a Man, The Slave obedient unto death, the Lamb Slain from the first foundations of the world, The Word made flesh, the tender new-born Child That is the end of all my heart’s desire.
Then shall my spirit, naked of its hopes, Stripped of its love unto the very bone, Sink simply into Love’s embrace and be Made consummate of all its burning bliss.
_August 26th, 1917._
SONNET FOR THE FIFTH OF OCTOBER
If I had ridden horses in the lists, Fought wars, gone pilgrimage to fabled lands, Seen Pharaoh’s drinking cups of amethysts, Held dead Queens’ secret jewels in my hands-- I would have laid my triumphs at your feet, And worn with no ignoble pride my scars.... But I can only offer you, my sweet, The songs I made on many a night of stars.
Yet have I worshipped honour, loving you; Your graciousness and gentle courtesy, With ringing and romantic trumpets blew A mighty music through the heart of me,-- A joy as cleansing as the wind that fills The open spaces on the sunny hills.
WARFARE
When I consider all thy dignity, Thy honour which my baseness doth accuse To my own soul, thy pride which doth refuse Less than the suffering thou hast given me, My hope is chilled to fear. How stealthily Must I dispose my forces! With what ruse And ambush snatch the bearer of good news, Ere I can escalade austerity!
Easier it were to fling the baleful lord And the infernal legions of the Pit, To ride undaunted at that roaring horde: But who shall armour me with delicate wit Sufficient for thine overthrow? What sword Win to the tower where thy perfections sit?
_March 10th, 1918._
TREASON
Thou hast renounced thy proud and royal state; Deserted thy strong men-at-arms who stand Attentive to imperious command; And with a small key at the groaning gate-- Sweet traitress!--met thine enemy. The great Moon threw a white enchantment o’er the land When in my hand I caught thy yielded hand, And laughing kissed thy laughing lips elate.
For of thy queenly folly thou hast laid In sandalwood thy stiff, embroidered gown; With happiness apparelled thou hast strayed _Incognita_ through many a sunlit town, Heedless of our uncaptained hosts arrayed Or of the flags their battles shall bring down.
_March 17th, 1918._
THERE WAS AN HOUR
There was an hour when stars flung out A magical wild melody, When all the woods became alive With elfin dance and revelry.
A holiday for happy hearts!-- The trees shone silver in the moon, And clapped their gleaming hands to see Night like a radiant kindled noon!
For suddenly a new world woke At one new touch of wizardry, When my love from her mirthful mouth Spoke words of sweet true love to me.
_February 9th, 1918._
NOCTURNE
When evening hangs her lamp above the hill And calls her children to her waiting hearth, Where pain is shed away and love and wrath, And every tired head lies white and still--
Dear heart, will you not light a lamp for me, And gather up the meaning of the lands, Silent and luminous within your hands, Where peace abides and mirth and mystery?
That I may sit with you beside the fire, And ponder on the thing no man may guess, Your soul’s great majesty and gentleness, Until the last sad tongue of flame expire.
_December 21st, 1916._
PRIDE
Who having known through night a great star falling With half the host of heaven in its wake, And o’er chaotic seas a dread voice calling, And a new purple dawn of presage break,
Can hope to conquer thee, proud Son of Morning, Arrayed in mighty lusts of heart and eyes, With blood-red rubies set for thine adorning And sorceries wherein men’s souls grow wise?
Who shall withstand the onslaught of thy chariot, Who ride to battle with thy gorgeous kings? Dost thou not count the silver to Iscariot, And Tyrian scarlet and the marvellous rings?
But ivory limbs and the flung festal roses, The maddening music and the Chian wine, Are overpast when one glad heart discloses A pride more strange and terrible than thine!
That looked unsatisfied upon thy splendour, And turned, all shaken with his love, away To one dear face that holds him true and tender Until the trumpets of the Judgment Day.
A pride that binds him till the last fierce ember Shall fade from pride’s tall roaring pyre in hell; The gentleness and grace he shall remember, The flower she gave, the love that she did tell.
BALLADE OF SHEEP BELLS
I left behind the green and gracious weald, And climbing stiffly up the steep incline Found high above each little cloistered field, Above the sombre autumn woods of pine-- Where gentle skies are clear and crystalline-- The place remote from dense and foolish towns; And there, where all the winds are sharp with brine, _I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs_.
The sun hung out of heaven like a shield Emblazoned o’er with heraldry divine. I suddenly saw, as though with eyes unsealed, A portent sent me for an awful sign, A fairy sea whereon the cold stars shine; And standing on the sward of withered browns, Burnt by the noontide and cropped close and fine, _I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs_.
A carillon of delicate music pealed And tingled through the steeple of my spine; My soul was filled with loveliness and healed. I know how joy and anguish intertwine-- But this shall greatly comfort me as wine, Good wine, comforts a man and sweetly drowns The many sorrows of this heart of mine-- _I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs_.
_L’Envoi_
Prince, old bell-wether of an ancient line, When you’re dead mutton I will weave you crowns Of living laurel--if on you I dine-- _I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs!_
BALLADE OF A FEROCIOUS CATHOLIC
There is a term to every loud dispute, A final reckoning I’m glad to say: Some people end discussion with their boot; Others, the prigs, will simply walk away. But I, within a world of rank decay, Can face its treasons with a flaming hope, Undaunted by faith’s foemen in array-- _I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope!_
They do not ponder on the Absolute, But wander in a fog of words astray. They have no rigid creed one can confute, No hearty dogmas riotous and gay, But feebly mutter through thin lips and grey Things foully fashioned out of sin and soap;-- But I, until my body rests in clay, _I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope!_
I’ve often thought that I would like to shoot The modernists on some convenient day; Pull out eugenists by their noxious root; The welfare-worker chattering like a jay I’d publicly and pitilessly slay With blunderbuss or guillotine or rope, Burn at the stake, or boil in oil, or flay-- _I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope._
_L’Envoi_
Prince, proud prince Lucifer, your evil sway Is over many who in darkness grope: But as for me, I go another way-- _I drain a mighty tankard to the Pope!_
_March 2nd, 1918._
DAWN
I have beheld above the wooded hill Thy tender loveliness, O Morning, break; Beheld the solemn gladness thou dost spill On eyes not yet awake.
But why recall unto the painful day Wild passions sleeping like oblivious kings? The broad day comes and thou dost speed away Westward on swift wide wings!
_December 23rd, 1917._
SUNSET
I have seen death in many a varied guise, Cruel and tender, rude and beautiful, Looking through windows in a young child’s eyes, Stealing as soft as shadows in a pool, Falling a sudden arrow of dismay, Blown on a bugle with an iron note: The slow and gentle progress of decay, The taking of a strong man by the throat.
I have seen flowers wither and the leaf Of lusty Summer burn to hectic red. But ah! that splendid death untouched by grief: The sun with glad and golden-visaged head Superbly standing on his deadly pyre, And sinking in a sea of jewelled fire!
_February 10th, 1918._
PEACE
Whose lives are bound By sleep and custom and tranquillity Have never found That peace which is a riven mystery
Who only share The calm that doth this stream, these orchards bless, Breathe but the air Of unimpassioned pagan quietness....
Initiate, Pain burns about your head, an aureole, Who hold in state The utter joy which wounds and heals the soul.
You kiss the Rod With dumb, glad lips, and bear to worlds apart The peace of God Which passeth all understanding in your heart.
CARRION
The guns are silent for an hour; the sounds Of war forget their doom; the work is done-- Strong men, uncounted corpses heaped in mounds, Are rotting in the sun.
Foul carrion--souls till yesterday!--are these With piteous faces in the bloodied mire; But where are now their generous charities? Their laughter, their desire?
In each rent breast, each crushed and shattered skull Lived joy and sorrow, tenderness and pain, Hope, ardours, passions brave and beautiful Among these thousands slain!
A little time ago they heard the call Of mating birds in thicket and in brake; They wondering saw night’s jewelled curtain fall And all the pale stars wake....
Bodies most marvellously fashioned, stark, Strewn broadcast out upon the trampled sod-- These temples of the Holy Ghost--O hark!-- These images of God!
Flesh, as the Word became in Bethlehem, Houses to hold their Sacramental Lord: Swiftly and terribly to harvest them Swept the relentless sword!
Happy if in your dying you can give Some symbol of the Eternal Sacrificed, Some pardon to the hearts of those who live-- Dying the death of Christ!
_Feast of the Epiphany,
January 6th, 1917._
THE BUILDING OF THE CITY
I, John, who once was called by Him in jest Boanerges, the thunder’s son, Who lay in tenderness upon His breast-- Now that my days are done,
And a great gathering glory fills my sight, Would tell my children e’er I go Of Him I saw with head and hair as white As white wool--white as snow.
The face before which heaven and earth did flee, The burnished feet, the eyes of flame, The seven stars bright with awful mystery, And the Ineffable Name!
Yet I who saw the four dread horsemen ride, The vials of the wrath of God, Beheld a greater thing: the Lamb’s pure Bride, The golden floors she trod.
How Babylon, Babylon was overthrown, And how Euphrates flowed with blood-- Ah, but His mercy through the wide world sown, The tree with healing bud!
I heard, among the hosts of Paradise, The glad new song that never tires, A Lamb as it had been slain in sacrifice Enthroned amid the choirs.
After the utmost woes have taken toll, And ravens plucked the eyes of kings, God’s own strange peace shall come upon the soul On gentle, dove-like wings.